Just another WordPress.com weblog

I really admire the genius of Serge Gainsbourg and in will most certainly be the topic of one of my future post. Jacques Brel was a tragic figure and amazing performer. But my all time favorite, the songs I want to hear when I am feeling blue are Joe Dassin’s songs. For many reasons. I used to listen to them again and again when I was a child and those were happy moments in a mist of not so happy ones. I was in love with him when I was between 6 and 8.

Joe Dassin et maryse massiera

He was charming and had great hair. Him and his wife Maryse Massiera were friends of my parents . I remember him sticking up to me when my father was forbidding me to eat a piece of candy. I remember their many persian cats.

Joe Dassin and Maryse Massiera with their persans

After all these years I think that Joe Dassin was a role model to me. His father the famous movie director Jules Dassin decided to move from New York to Paris to escape Mc Carthyism when he was a child. Joe stayed in France but always kept a strong connection to the US. He sang a lot of adaptations of American pop songs in French. Two songs made a big impression on me. “L’Amerique”. “Mes Amis je dois m’en aller, je n’ai plus qu’a jeter mes cles, car elle m’attend depuis que je suis ne, l’Amerique”. “Friends I have to leave, I’ll just throw my keys because she has been waiting for me since I was born, America.” See the similarities :). And my favorite song of all time is Cote Violon, Cote Banjo. This one is struggling to figure out what he loves best France or the US. I just love the banjo on the song and the lyrics. Here it is in a duet with Annie Cordy (lovely lady with whom I played kazoo on the Olympia scene).

After yesterday’s Magnolia bakery extravagance and actually a couple of weeks of food decadence during a stressful period 😦 I am back to what French women do the best … diet. It is Sunday and I still reminisce of yesterday’s banana pudding. I decided to create my own low cal version and it was very good so I’ll share it with you. The key element is Siggis yogurt from Iceland. After a decade of missing terribly the array of yogurts available in France, I am now able to find in New York Greek style yogurts (tart and very versatile) and Siggis yogurt (we call this dense yogurt process “fromage blanc”).It offers a lot of possibilities for tasty and healthy deserts and sauces.

“These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly” Now that’s a great quote to stir up trouble. Karl Lagarfeld is a very talented man.Like any artist he has a higher standard of esthetics that drive his inspiration. His is mostly women with no shape whose body look androgynous. He can’t control that. I work in the fashion industry and most runway models are oddities of nature . Some of them do owe their shape to their genetic pool. Most of them are starving and usually have to control their hunger with pills or worse. Karl Lagarfeld sells a fantasy , that fantasy destroys lives. Most women with normal bodies do not spend their lives in front of the TV eating chips. Lots of artists from Botero to Rubens and Fellini have been inspired by the other end of the spectrum, extra curves. I think that it is no secret that Karl likes men and his ideal is a skinny man/woman. Good for him, but it does not give him the right to mentally torture young girls and housewives.

Who are the Tom and Katie or Brad and Angelina of France? Well you have certainly heard of our president Sarkozy who was elected married to a woman than she left him and he very quickly found a new soulmate, model-singer-serial famous men dater Carla Bruni. All of this happened in less than a year.
Vincent Cassel (so talented and number 1 French actor in France and abroad) and Monica Bellucci (so talented and beautiful) have been together for 2 decades and have a daughter Deva.
Vanessa Paradis was a child star,still sings and writes and produce as well as act in French movies. Her and Johnny Depp are the quintessential bohemian couple with 2 children and a French pied a terre in the South of France.
The newest power couple is Marion Cotillard (la mome) and Guillaume Canet (the Beach) and actor-director who used to be married to Diane Kruger).
They all look as glamorous as US celebrity couple, the only difference is that they are really in love and have been together for a long time.Mean but true.

Cupcakes have actually kind of made it to Paris or so I heard. However the recipes have been adapted to the French palate. What’s wrong with a good old Vanilla buttercream cupcake? Are the French just haughty and jealous? I eat my fair share of cupcakes as comfort food.

Magnolia Bakery chocolate cupcakes

However I do think that the balance in taste is off and makes you very quickly unwell. Too much sugar too much butter. I do it, and have seen other people do it too – remove part of the frosting. Going back to Magnolia Bakery , I have tasted other brownies and cakes and they have similar flaws. Too much of each ingredient not allowing you to taste any flavors. Except one, the god sent Banana Pudding.

Magnolia Bakery Banana Pudding

OMG! Heaven on earth. Not to0 sweet , great flavor, great light texture… It tastes French! I ate the whole pot in a couple of minutes, my cat had to lick the box and I feel fine. I do thing that Magnolia bakery could open in the heart of touristy Paris and make cupcakes in. They would probably have to go a little easier on the frosting and work on more subtle flavors.

Violette was born over 40 years ago in merry Paris, France. She lived there until she was 21 and then moved to New York. The anecdote is that both her French parents met in New York . Her mother was a model and her father who gratuated from Harvard was working for Sony music. They both decided to move back to France to start a family but somehow Violette’s DNA got inprinted by the Big Apple. Violette lives in New York with an American boyfriend and 2 American lady cats (her girls). She is the editor of 2 American publications.

Well they are already invading New York. Stroll in Central Park or on Broadway and you will hear the sweet sounds of La Langue Francaise. I am the French magazine editor of an American publication and somewhere along the way I have learn how to think like the locals. I want to find back my French soul and see if it can merge with what I have become, a New Yorker . A bientot sur nos ondes internet.